Doctor admits to groping 16-year-old girl sitting next to him on flight from Seattle to New Jersey

A doctor has admitted to groping a 16-year-old teen on an United Airlines flight. (Mel Evans/AP)

A doctor has admitted groping a 16-year-old girl on a flight from Seattle to New Jersey earlier this year.

Vijaykumar Krishnappa appeared before a federal magistrate in Newark on Wednesday. The 29-year-old Indian national will be sentenced to between 30 and 90 days in prison in January.

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Prosecutors say Krishnappa intentionally touched the girl near her groin as she slept on the United Airlines flight in July.

Krishnappa "put his hand on her groin and inner thigh, and began rubbing the victim through her clothing," according to the complaint. The teen woke up as he tried to put his hand down her pants.

She told CBS News earlier this year that she felt terrorized even after Krishnappa was moved to a different seat.

"I just felt like he could see me. Like he could see wherever I was sitting," she told CBS News. "There was just still so much time, like, I couldn't just leave the plane. I didn't have anyone. I didn't feel like there was anyone on the plane that could protect me."

She would later pick the doctor out of a lineup.

Krishnappa was studying medicine in the U.S. under a fellowship for doctors from foreign counties.